I received the letter from you and Wurm and your article late yesterday
evening. In accordance with your and Kautsky’s request, lasse ich es
bei Ihrem Artikel
bewenden.[1]

I have already written about half of a long article against both Martov and
Trotsky.[2]
I shall have to leave it and start on an article against
Trotsky. Since you meet Kautsky, please toll him that I am taking care
of the reply to Trotsky. If the Germans are so afraid of a polemic, I
don’t think it matters much whether the reply comes a week earlier or a
week later?

What a pity that even Kautsky and Wurm do not see how disgusting and mean such
articles as those of Martov and Trotsky are. I shall try to write at least a
private letter to Kautsky to clarify the matter. It is really a down right
scandal that Martov and Trotsky lie with impunity and write scurrilous lampoons
in the guise of “scientific” articles!

By the way, could you help me to clear up two practical questions. First: could
a translator from Russian into German be found in Berlin (for articles for
Neue Zeit)? Or is this unreliable and expensive, so that it would be
better to look for someone here? I shall look out for someone here In any case,
hut I should like to know your opinion, as you have considerable experience in
this respect.

Second: what if I were to write a pamphlet (of a size á la.
Cherevanin: Das Proletariat in der russischen Revoiution) on the
subject of the Russian revolution, its lessons, class struggle, etc. Could a
German party publisher be found or not? Do the Germans pay for such things, or
must payment be looked for only from the Russians, while the Germans are served
nebenbei?

In connection with the reply to Martov, I have dug into some very interesting
strike statistics of 1905-08 and should very much like to analyse them. It is a
subject more suitable for a book or pamphlet than for an
article.[3]
But the
Germans are disgracefully “unconscious” in questions concerning the
appraisal of the Russian revolution!

I enclose a brief enumeration of what it is desirable to add against Martov. If
you include even a part of it in your article, it would be very
good.[18]

Here, in my opinion, are the chief (not all, by far) points of
Martov’s lies and falsehood which it is desirable to point out (if not in
full, at least in part):

In saying that Comrade Radek is misquoting, Comrade Martov casts suspicion
without giving proof. We, however, have full proof that Martov quotes
falsely. “So far we have been speaking French” (Die Neue
Zeit, 1910), Martov quotes Lenin. The quotation is
distorted. Lenin said: “During the revolution we learned to
’speak French”’
(Proletary No. 46)[4]
. By distorting the
quotation, Martov contrives to conceal the fact that he (like all opportunists)
calls on the workers to unlearn the methods of revolutionary struggle.

“To speak French”—“richtiger gesagt:
blanquistisch”,[5]
is Martov’s emendation. We thank him for his
frankness. To call the participation of the French proletariat in the French
revolutions “Blanquism” is precisely the “essence” of the
views of Martov and
Queesel.[19]

The Russian Quessel forgot to mention that in the agrarian
programme of the Russian Social-Democrats (adopted In Stockholm, 1906, when
the Mensheviks had a majority!) it is stated “support for the
revolutionary actions of the peasantry to the extent of confiscation
of the landed estates”. Is there anything like this in
“Europe”, O Russian Quessel? There is not, for in Europe the
questions of a bourgeois revolution are no longer
revolutionary issues. The “school of the capitalist
bourgeoisie” as far as the Russian peasants are concerned is a school of
betrayals and treachery on the part of the liberal bourgeoisie (which has been
betraying the peasants to the landowners and absolutism), and only
extreme opportunists are capable of defending such a school.

In scoffing at the “union with the proletariat of 100 mil lion
peasants”, Martov is scoffing at the whole revolution, which has
demonstrated such a union in practice both in the arena of the uprising
(October, November-December, 1905) and in the arena of both Dumas
(1906-1907).

Martov vacillates helplessly between the liberals (they are against
“confiscation of the landed estates”, against
“revolutionary actions of the peasantry”) and the Social-Democrats,
who so far have by no means withdrawn their support of the peasant
uprising or their statement to this effect contained in their
programme.

Martov believes that during the years of revolution (1905-07) it was
not the question of a republic, but “die Frage der
Unabhängigkeit der Volksvertretung”
(S. 918)[7]
that was on the order
of the day. Independence from whom? From the monarchy which had
carried out
Staatsstreiche?[8]
The Russian opportunists forget at least the
connection between the agrarian and the political revolution (is it possible
to fight for the confiscation of the landed estates without fighting for a
republic?); they forget that the era of Staatsstreiche, der Aufstände,
der
Niederwerfungsstreiks,[9]
by virtue of its
obective conditions and not of our will, puts the question of
a republic on the order of the day. The “republic” as a slogan of
the day in 1905==“romanticism”;
“independence” (from the monarchy which carries out
Staatsstreiche and wages den
Bürgerkrieg)[10]
=Realpolitik,
is not that so, O Russian Quessel?

Apropos. Rosa Luxemburg argued with Kautsky as to whether in Germany the moment
had arrived for
Niederwerfungsstrategie,[11]
and Kautsky plainly and bluntly stated that he considered this
moment was unavoidable and imminent but had not yet arrived. But Martov,
“deepening
(verballhornend[12]
)
Kautsky, denies the applicability of
the Niederwerfungsstrategie to the year 1905 in Russia! Martov finds
that the uprising in December 1905 was
evoked “künstlich”[13]
(Neue Zeit, S. 913). Die Leute, welche so glauben, können
nur künstlich zur Sozialdemokratie gerechnet
werden. Natürlich sind sie
Nationalliberale.[14]

Martov ridicules the view that the proletariat is “die
ausschlaggebende Macht”
(S. 909)[15]
in the revolution. So far only the
liberals have dared (and not always, at that)
to deny the indisputable historical fact that in 1905 the Russian proletariat
actually played the part of “der ausschlaggebenden
Macht”. And when a theory which denies the “hegemony of the
proletariat in the Russian revolution” gained the upper hand in the
five-volume Social Movement (edited by Martov and Potresov), Plekhanov
resigned from the editorial board and declared the Social
Movement a work of liquidators. Martov now represents not Menshevism as a
whole but only that kind of Menshevism which Plekhanov, who has remained a
Menshevik, has repudiated and which he has called opportunism.

Martov contraposes the Russian boycott of 1906 to the anarchists’ defence of
boycott (“political abstention”) “in ganz
Westeuropa”. We have already spoken about the boycott of 1906 (you
have already dealt with this). But speaking of boycott in general, why did
Martov forget the chief application of a boycott in the Russian
revolution, the boycott of the Bulygin Duma (the law of August 6, 1905)?
Against this boycott were all the liberals, even those of the Left
(Osvobozhdeniye League), in favour of it were the Bolshevik Social-Democrats. Is
it because this boycott was victorious that Martov is silent about it?
Is it because this boycott was the slogan of a victorious
Niederwerfungsstrategie?

All the Mensheviks (especially in Nasha Zarya, Vozrozhdeniye and
Zhizn[20]) seized on Rosa Luxemburg’s dispute with
Kautsky in order to declare K. Kautsky a “Menshevik”. Martov is
trying his hardest, by means of kleinliche und miserable Diplomatie,
to deepen the gulf between Rosa Luxemburg and K. Kautsky. These
elende[16]
devices cannot succeed. Revolutionary Social-Democrats may
argue about the timing of Niederwerfungsstrategie in Germany,
but not of its appropriateness in Russia in 1905. It has never
occurred to Kautsky to deny its appropriateness for Russia in
1905. Only liberals and German and Russian Quessels can deny that!

Well then, will not the upshot of the question of the mass strike in Magdeburg
(the acceptance of Rosa’s resolution and her withdrawal of the second
part) make for peace be-
tween her and Kautsky? and the Vorstand? Or will it not be
soon?[21] ((I wrote to Rosa Luxemburg a couple of weeks ago
from Stockholm.))

[6]
“In the whole of Western Europe the peasant masses are
considered suitable for alliance to the extent that they come to experience
the painful results of the capitalist revolution in agriculture...; for
Russia a picture has been drawn of the union with the proletariat of 100
million peasants... who have not yet been through the school of the capitalist
bourgeoisie” (Neue Zeit, p. 909). That precisely is Russian
Quesselism!—Ed.

[7]
“The question of the independence of the people’s
representative assembly—Ed.

[17]Marchlewski, Julian (1866–1925)—prominent member of the
revolutionary movement in Poland, Germany and Russia. Was one of the
organisers and leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Poland and
Lithuania. Took an active part in the revolution of 1905–07. At the Fifth
(London) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was elected alternate member of the
Central Committee. From 1909 worked chiefly in the German Social-Democratic
Party.

[18]The article against Martov by Marchlewski (Karsky) was published in the
journal Die Neue Zeit (I. Band, No. 4, October 28, 1910) under the
heading: “Ein Mi\ssverständnis” (A Misunderstanding). This article
dealt with Martov’s distortion of the quotation from Lenin’s article and
his application to the Russian revolution of 1905–07 of Kautsky’s idea to
the effect that “the strategy of overthrow” was inapplicable to Germany.

[19]Quessel L.—German Social-Democrat, ultra-opportunist, who gave
an opportunist appraisal of the revolution of 1905.

Vozrozhdeniye (Renascence)—a legal journal of the Menshevik
liquidators, published in Moscow from December 1908 to July 1910.

Zhizn (Life)—a legal socio-political journal, organ of the
Menshevik liquidators, published in Moscow; two issues were put out (in
August and September 1910).

[21]This refers to the controversy between Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky in
the German Social-Democratic press on the question of the general political
strike. The Magdeburg Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party held
on September 18–24, 19l0, adopted the first part of a resolution proposed
by Rosa Luxemburg recognising the general political strike as a method of
struggle for an electoral reform in Prussia; the part of the resolution
Lenin refers to deals with the question of propaganda of the idea of a
general strike.